“Road!” Golias looked at me incredulously. “Why the devil should we chew dust and argue with Lucius when this raft will take us the long half of the way to our destination in peace and comfort? We’ll make better time than we can walking, too.”
Feeling that I should have had sense enough to think of that myself, I saw fit to object. “Yeah, I know,” I said, overlooking the fact that the question of ownership hadn’t previously bothered me, “but how about the fellow the raft belongs to? He must have been planning a trip himself to have put all this stuff aboard.”
“Unquestionably.” Golias was inspecting the mechanism of the gun. “He had some sort of getaway in mind.”
“Then don’t you think we should tie this thing up in some spot where he can find it if he goes looking?”
“And kick providence in the face?” Looking pained, Golias put the piece down, so he could jab a finger at me. “I’ll be party to no such Delian sacrilege and general damned foolishness.”
As long as we were going to stay aboard it for a while, I examined the rest of the craft with added interest. It was twenty feet long by about twelve wide. Made of two-by-twelves nailed on huge logs, it was both buoyant and sturdy. Balancing the wigwam there was a clay hearth for cooking. Beside it was a pile of wood and a chopping block with an axe stuck in it.
“If we only had water, we’d be all fixed,” I said.
“If you drink Long River dry, you’ll be the first one to do it,” Golias informed me. He had brought the frying pan and the coffee pot out with him, and he dipped the latter in the turgid water. “Can you use an axe?”
“Some,” I admitted.
“Split some of that wood, then, and I’ll fix us some hoecake, bacon, and java.”
Eating that meal, I began to realize how complete we were. To improve our diet it would be necessary to do a little hunting, but otherwise we were independent of the shore. Meanwhile, and with a minimum of effort, we were accomplishing our purpose.
To make things better, there were a couple of corncob pipes and some tobacco aboard. I hadn’t seen Golias smoke before, but he joined me after lunch. It was hot, and we had already peeled off our shirts. Some time later we worked the raft into slack water with a pair of long poles and took a dip. When we climbed back aboard we didn’t bother to dress again.
All the effort required of us was to see that the raft stayed in the current and didn’t get hung up on a sand bar or a snag. For this purpose one of us was on watch throughout the night. That was no hardship, for we could deal out time to suit ourselves. We had complete freedom and yet were warmly wrapped in boundaries. The raft was a continent, and yet it held us as snugly as a tire holds a wheel.
If the raft was a continent by day, it was a planet by night, gliding down the milky way of the mist-whitened river, the peer of Mars and Mercury, and all the stars of the wheeling constellations. In general the most we could see of the earth was the dark and jagged outlines of trees, which we were forever approaching and leaving, as the current shuttled us from one bank to another. Occasionally there were the lights of some town, and while it was still dark early the first morning we passed Troynovaunt.
Golias waked me just before we got there, but only in part to point out its great towers, black against the fading stars. There was a bridge, and we had to find slow water or risk being dashed against one of the stone piers which supported it.
It was two days later that we came to the only other bridge I saw. That was the one at Valentia. As we rounded the bend and drifted down the straightaway toward it, I observed men swarming over the spider-legged structure. The sound of the blows they struck, deep and hollow, reached us clearly.
“They must be just finishing it,” I said.
“Sometimes finish and end don’t mean the same thing,” Golias retorted. “Those sound like axes, not hammers.”
He was right, now that I thought of it. I peered downstream, puzzled.
“What’s the sense of knocking this bridge down before they’ve built another one?”
“You might just as well say what’s the use of building another one until this is down.” He spoke somewhat impatiently, and I noticed that his eyes were watching the west bank. “They’ve got a reason, and if we’re lucky, we’ll spot it.”
Up to that point we hadn’t been able to see the right end of the bridge, but within a couple of minutes it came into view. I then saw that I was wrong in attributing all the noise and shouting to the wrecking crew. There was plenty going on at the other side, though the excitement was of a different kind. Men in armor flooded the approach there and spilled over to line the shore. Back down the road they stood in ranks as far as I could distinguish men, and beyond that point I could descry flags taking the wind. This was an army to make the force of Brodir and his allies look like a platoon.
One of the best things about rafting is that when you pass something going on ashore, you have plenty of time to watch the action develop. In this case we had seats on the center aisle. With the delighted interest of a man watching a four-alarm fire, I shifted my gaze from the invaders who wanted to use the bridge to the group straining to destroy the approach to their town. The only thing which wasn’t clear was the reason for the army’s delay, but I soon figured it out. The invading commander had decided that the structure was already unsafe.
That thought sponsored an idea which bothered me. “Suppose they dump the thing in our laps,” I suggested.
“Huh?” Golias was so absorbed he didn’t turn his head. “Nothing we can do about it.”
That was so. We could work the raft ashore more or less where we wanted to if we made up our minds far enough in advance, but landing short of the bridge was now out of the question. The most we could do for ourselves, if we could manage that, was to fend ourselves off from the wooden piles on which it rested. I rose and picked up a pole in readiness.
“You’d better give me a hand, Golias.”
“Wait a minute. Look!”
Complying, I saw the biggest man I had ever set eyes on step from the ranks. It was only at that instant that I realized that the three men I had observed lounging at the western end of the bridge were not MPs of the invading force posted to warn troops off the bridge. Instead, they were defenders set to block the big fellow’s way. I whistled as I saw so much more than that. These three, bracing in the narrow passage, had blocked and were still blocking a vast army while their buddies sweated to obliterate this one point of vulnerability.
Previously I had viewed the spectacle with nonpartisan excitement, but now I knew whose side I was on. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” I said, but I wasn’t very optimistic.
The giant, for he was nothing less than that, had a sword nearly as long as an ordinary man. It seemed to me that he could finish all three of the defenders as easily as reaping daisy heads with a stick, and it was evident that he felt the same way. We were near enough to see him grinning.
“Gang him, you fools, gang him!” I said aloud. Instead only one man tackled the man mountain. The latter promptly knocked him spinning with a sweep of his sword, and both he and I thought it was all over. It just about was. While the big boy was winding up for another devastating swat, the man he had wounded sprang inside his guard, jumped up, and pushed his own sword through the giant’s face.
“Timber!” I exulted. Then my cheer turned to a squawk. “Oh, my God! Golias, help!”
Watching the fight, I hadn’t watched where the river was taking us. It was now apparent it was going to slat us against a pier. The reason for the town was the bridge, and the reason for the bridge was that the river was uncommonly narrow there. In consequence the mighty current raced through at double speed. Golias sprang to my assistance, but all we could do was to ease the shock of the collision. As it was, one corner of the raft struck the clump of piles with splintering force, spinning us around and knocking Lucius off his pins. When the raft spun, it removed the pressure against which we had been thrusting and spilled us t
o the deck, too.
When we recovered interest in what was happening on the bridge, the situation had changed. Only one of the three guardians — I think it was the one who had killed the giant — remained at his post. The other two, having evidently got word that the bridge was about to go, were nearing the town side. Of course, if it still held them, it was still possible for it to hold enemies; but the man who remained had let himself in for it.
I was about to express my worry over this development when, with a cracking sound like monstrous static, the eastern end of the bridge collapsed. In the water it collaborated with the current to drag the rest of the structure down. Interdependent, the wooden piers could not singly hold the weight they carried and stand against the river. One by one they tilted, and the superstructure peeled off.
It was lucky for us that we were downstream and going away from that furious stirring of water. Even at that a chasing wave rocked us, and Jones, who was having a hard time of it, skidded. If Golias hadn’t caught him by the tail, there would have been a donkey in the drink. Having seen that he was safe, I turned to watch what the army would do to the lone hand who had so balked them. I looked just in time. Armor and all, he dived into the stream.
It appeared to be a choice of suicide over capture, but to my astonishment he bobbed up and started swimming. “Do you think he can make it with all that hardware on him?” I asked.
Finding that he still had hold of Lucius’ tail, Golias dropped it. “There’ll be a long walk waiting for him on the other bank, but with a stroke like that it looks like he’ll put it through all right.” He chuckled. “Shall we tell Lars Porsena he might as well go home, or shall we let him figure it out for himself?”
In another few minutes both the town and the frustrated invaders were out of sight, and the woods closed in on the river again. Seeing that Jones was lying down, Golias and I leaned against him, lit up our pipes, and watched with detached approval while the world went by. Sometimes the raft would be facing toward one bank, sometimes toward another. Then again it would swing so we faced up or down stream. By turns we visited both shores and rode the middle of the river, and our talk was as loose footed as our progress. We had the freedom of every port on the chart of thought and took advantage of it in a good few cases.
Even in the Boss of Arden I had never been so comfortably aware of my natural relation to the elements as I was during the days which followed. The air we breathed reeked of trees and earth as well as water. Nothing stood between us and day and night in their fullness. Under the sun a breeze tempered the heat. When darkness came, it was technically a little cooler, but the breeze dropped, leaving the air still attuned to our naked bodies. Having abandoned clothes, we deemed it silly to hide from the warm rain. Usually we slept out on deck, seeking the shelter of the wigwam merely when a storm interfered with our rest.
We went ashore only to gather wood and to do a little hunting. About the fifth day, for example, we maneuvered into slack water inshore so that Golias could land and bag us something for supper. He was going through the business of loading the old rifle when we heard a voice.
“You surely intend no such barbarity as to mortify the tender ears of God’s fishes with that murderous blunderbuss, do you?”
Glancing up, we saw a man with a rod, landing net, and creel on the bank above us. In spite of the heat he was carefully dressed, from buckled shoes through knickers to a high crowned hat. A small man, he had, allowing for his moustachio and goatee, the face of a happy saint. He was in earnest in what he said, I should judge, though a smile made his impertinence acceptable.
Golias smiled back at him. “I assume,” he said, “that although God’s fishes have tender ears, they don’t have tender mouths.”
As if pleased with the contention, the stranger seated himself on the bank. “Why, to be truthful with you, friend, there are those who have and those who haven’t. One of the dispensations which makes angling the most delightful of arts is that one which supplies creation with leather-mouthed fish such as the chub or cheven, the barbel, the carp, and the gudgeon on the one hand, and balances these on the scale of variety with the pike or luce, the perch, or the trout, whose mouths will spew a hook where dexterity isn’t at the other end of the line. But if, and your remark could also be taxed for this interpretation, you imply that the hook pains the fish, I could reply that none is on record as complaining. Speaking less equivocally, I could grant that such is the probability, or I could declare that it is no more possible to conceive of a fish having feelings than to attribute them to trees. Even less, I should say, for it has frequently been asserted that each tree once had a spirit winsomely incarnate in a dryad, who suffered and died with it. Of course, these were not possessed of the beauty and other pretty qualities which graced the sprites of diverse bodies of water, fitting them to be loved by gods and to give birth to heroes and anglers. Can you answer me a question?”
“Probably not at such length,” Golias admitted.
“Not all subjects permit of discursiveness.” The fellow smiled again. “Nor do the addicts of most pursuits have the leisure to develop it. It could even be argued that they are not capable of sending their minds on voyages of inquiry, elsewise they would naturally gravitate toward angling. And that returns us to my question. Why should a man, one whom I can observe to have mental address, plan to run, shout, set off explosives, make a stink in the air with gunpowder, scatter blood, and jangle the nerves of the forest, when the subtler pleasure of killing fish is at hand?”
“Passing over the fact that you do not run and shout if you wish to catch up with a wild turkey,” Golias retorted, “I see no difference in the nature of our activities.”
“Do you not, Venator? Why, it is a difference as great as that between the footpad who sneaks up behind you and hits you over the head and the coney catcher who will get your money only if his wit is superior to yours. Moreover, it is a difference of the spirit. In the case of hunting, the bullet, the arrow, or the dog is, to put it mildly, forced upon your victim. In the case of angling, it is the fish’s free choice whether or not he takes your hook, which skill must make alluring.”
“That’s a good point, Piscator,” Golias agreed, “but there’s no trick to seducing a Long River mudcat. It’ll swallow anything.”
“A mudcat!” The words were shocked out of the man. “Catching a mudcat isn’t angling, and all the arts of Trimalchio’s chef, considerable as I will concede these to have been, could not make one palatable. Why not put aside that piece and watch me catch you something good enough for even an angler to eat? I came here to duel with a pike, but as I doubt that you have the necessary condiments to fit him to your palates, we’ll go a mile or so downstream, and I’ll kill a bass for you.”
This man took my fancy. “I’ll be glad to go with you,” I volunteered, “even if Golias here doesn’t feel like it, Mr. Piscator.”
“Come aboard the raft,” Golias invited, “and we’ll all go.”
“Why, a thank you for your courtesy,” Piscator said; and without further discussion he came down the bank and jumped to the deck. After I had put his rod in the wigwam so that Jones wouldn’t step on it, we shoved off. The channel was some distance out, but, rather than exert ourselves in the heat, we let our craft make its own way through the slow water. Our sluggish progress dismayed our passenger no more than it did us. He had a pipe of his own, and soon all three of us were smoking contentedly.
“This craft is too good for any but fishermen or other wise men, so I hold you to be men of wisdom,” he said at length. “Indeed, having found you wise enough to take one excellent suggestion of mine, I am encouraged to ask that you accept a second.”
“What’s that?” Golias demanded.
“Why, at the gait we’re going it will be some while before we reach the fishing grounds I have in mind, so let’s use the time for the next best of pursuits and treat each other to songs.”
“How about the fishes’ tender ears?” I enquired.
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The other laughed. “While I’m no Arion to charm fishes, I count on them to take no harm from my song, in as much, especially, as I will sing nothing lewd or otherwise unfit to pass from my mind to that of any hearer whatsoever. Will one of you begin?”
“No.” Golias gestured toward him. “As our guest, start off, if you don’t mind.”
“Not in the least,” Piscator assured him. “In fact, next to a day of fishing I can think of nothing that pleases me more than a good song served up in my own music. Combining the two pleasures, I shall now sing of angling.”
Angling is the only fashion
Of gaining good;
For men of sense and gentle passion
Right livelihood
Is following the water well and knowing
Where salmon swim or muskelonge are waiting,
And judging how much line to give, and throwing
A hook where careful skill has done the baiting.
Every mind is like a river,
One nobly stocked,
Where thoughts, like trout with fins aquiver,
Lurk, shadow-locked.
Great, shining beauties, they won’t leave their hiding
For bare hooks or stale lures tossed out of season;
Only the cunning cast will draw them gliding
To fight the line which brings them into reason.
“I see you fish farther than most,” Golias commented, “and I like the way you give your heart to a song. Well, I’ll sing of a river, specifically this one, too; though I won’t entirely neglect fishing, either.”
From source to mouth there’s but one ford —
And that cannot be crossed —
Where Ferdiad was gripped and gored;
His best friend won and lost.
The water’s red from brink to brink,
The Morrigan comes down to drink;
And the river goes on south.
Right close in shore, to ward off cold,